lay,

No

"James read the petition," says Mr. Macau"he folded it up, and his countenance grew dark. This,' he said, 'is a great surprise to me. I did not expect this from your Church, especially from some of you. This is a standard of rebellion.' The bishops broke out into passionate professions of loyalty; but the King, as usual, repeated the same words over and over. 'I tell you this is a standard of rebellion.' Rebellion!' cried Trelawney, falling on his knees,' For God's sake, sir, do not say so hard a thing of us. Trelawney can be a rebel. Remember that my family has fought for the Crown. Remember how I served your Majesty when Monmouth was in the West." "We put down the last rebellion,' said Lake, we shall not raise another. We rebel' exclaimed Turner; we are ready to die at your Majesty's feet.' Sir,' said Ken, in a more manly tone, I hope that you will grant to us that liberty of conscience which you grant to all mankind." Still James went on. This is rebellion. This is a standard of rebellion. Did ever a good Churchman question the dispensing power before? Have not some of you preached for it and written for it? It is a standard of rebellion. I will have my declaration published.' We have two duties to perform,' answered Ken, Four duty to God and our duty to your Majesty. We honor you; but we fear God.' Have I de

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served this?' said the King, more and more angry; I who have been such a friend to your Church! I did not expect this from some of you. I will be obeyed. My declaration shall be published. You are trumpeters of sedition. What do you do here? Go to your dioceses and see that I am obeyed. I will keep this paper. I will not part with it. I will remember you that have signed it. 'God's will be done,' said Ken. God has given me the dispensing power,' said the King, and I will maintain it. I tell you that there are still seven thousand of your Church who have not bowed the knee to Baal.' The bishops respectfully retired."-Vol. ii. p. 352.

By means which have not been discovered, the petition was printed that very night, and circulated in thousands, and a short letter, believed to be by Halifax, and sent to every clergyman, warned him in eloquent language of the danger of submission. The declaration was read only in four out of one hundred places of worship in London, and the Church, as if with one heart, refused to obey the despotic mandate. The Dissenting body applauded the bishops and the clergy, and

James stood awe-struck amid the storm which he had evoked. The seven prelates were summoned before the King and Council, and armed with the best legal advice, they repaired to the palace on the 8th of June. The tyrant browbeat them with his usual coarseness, and the Chancellor called upon them to enter into recognizances to appear to take their trial for libel. The bishops refused, and were ordered to the Tower. No sooner had the holy men come forth under a guard, to be conveyed by water to their prison, than the feelings of the people burst forth in one simultaneous expression of admiration. Thousands prayed aloud for them, and blessed them, and dashing into the stream, asked their blessing. The sentinels at the Traitor's Gate asked the prisoners to bless them. The soldiery drank the healths of the bishops, and a deputation of ten non-conformist divines visited them in the Tower.

On the morning of Sunday the 10th of June, two days after the imprisonment of the bishops, the Queen bore a son, "the most unfortunate of princes, destined to 77 years of exile and wandering, of vain projects, of honors more galling than insults, and of hopes such as make the heart sick." The nation believed that the young prince was a supposititious child; and though the suspicion is now considered unjust, yet it naturally arose from the absence at his birth of every person who had the smallest interest in detecting the fraud.

After remaining a week in custody the bishops were brought before the Court of King's Bench, pleaded not guilty, and were allowed to be at large upon their own recognizances. The trial took place on the 29th June in Westminster Hall. The contest between the Crown lawyers and the counsel for the bishops was long and fierce, and from the sudden changes that took place in the hopes and fears of the parties, the trial excited the most dramatic interest. The judges were divided on the question of libel; but the jury, with the exception of the brewer to the palace, who at last gave way, were unanimous, and no sooner had the foreman pronounced the bishops NOT GUILTY, than Halifax sprang up and waved his hat. "At that signal,' says Mr. Macaulay, "benches and galleries raised a shout. In a moment ten thousand persons who crowded the great hall replied with a still louder shout, which made the old oaken roof crack, and in another moment the

huzza, which was heard at Temple Bar." The note of triumph passed along the river, and along the streets and highways, with electric speed. Tears were mingled with acclamations. The acquitted prelates took shelter in a chapel from the tumultuous gratulations of thousands, and the jury, as they retired, received the blessings of the people. Bonfires, rockets, illuminations, and the burning of the Pope, everywhere expressed the popular joy. Whitehall was the only locality where no thrill of gladness was felt, and James, who received the dread news when in his camp at Hounslow, had their impression deepened on his guilty heart by the

shouts and cheers of his soldiers.

It was now time that Liberty endangered, and Faith oppressed, should put forth their avenging arm. The flower of the English nobility determined on resistance, and William of Orange, appreciating the magnitude of the crisis, resolved to obey the call. Difficulties, however, of no ordinary kind beset his path. He could not trust to a general rising of the people. An armed force was required, and that force must consist of foreign mercenaries, even if he could obtain it. The state of parties in Holland might prevent him from receiving military aid, and as the object of his expedition was to establish a Protestant government in England, how could he enlist in his cause princes attached to the Church of Rome? All these difficulties were gradually overruled by the folly of his enemies and the wisdom of his friends. James threatened to punish for disobedience the whole body of the priesthood, but even the High Commission quailed, and it received its death-blow by the resignation of Bishop Sprat. A royal mandate was dispatched to Oxford, requiring the University to choose Jeffreys as their chancellor, but they had previously elected the young Duke of Ormond. Discontent reigned among all classes, and the clergy, the gentry, and the army, were ready to welcome their noble deliverer.

James had gone to Salisbury on the 17th. He had been impatient for a battle, but now desired a retreat. On the following day Churchill and Grafton fled to the Prince's quarters. Kirke refused to obey the royal commands. The camp at Salisbury broke up. Prince George of Denmark, the Duke of Ormond, and the Earl of Drumlanrig, deserted to the Prince, and with the aid of Lady Churchill, the Princess Anna made her escape from Whitehall, and took refuge in the country-house of the noble-minded Duke of Dorset, in Epping Forest.

After receiving intelligence of these events, James summoned the Lords spiritual and temporal to the palace. He yielded to their advice to call a Parliament. He sent Halifax and other commissioners to Hungerford to negotiate with the Prince of Orange, who generously agreed to propositions which were acceptable to the partisans of the King. The negotiation, however, was on James's part a feint. His object was to gain time. The Queen and the Prince of Wales, whom the King entrusted to the charge of M. Lauzun, a French nobleman, made their escape to France. James assured the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, who had been summoned to his presence, that though he had sent his wife and his child out of England, he would himself remain at his post, and with this "unkingly and unmanly" falsehood on his lips, he had resolved in his heart to fly, and he fled at daybreak on the 11th December, 1688, tossing the Great Seal into the Thames as he crossed it in a wherry, and taking the road to Sheerness.

Catholic churches were demolished. Piles

were carried about in triumph. The house and library of the Spanish ambassador was consigned to the flames, and it was only by the aid of the military that the hotel of the

French ambassador was saved.

While the city was thus heaving beneath this moral earthquake, there was one fiend whose guilty soul quailed under every shock, and started at every sound. With the instinct of carnivorous life, the Judicial Tiger rushed into the thicket; but an unsuspected Eye detected him in his lair, and, saved with difficulty from the whips and halters of his pursuers, he was conducted to his cage in the Tower. That fiend was Jeffreys-and that Eye was the Eye of an insulted litigant, on whose visual memory the hideous physiognomy had been indelibly impressed. Our readers will doubtless partake in the vindictive pleasure with which Oldmixon viewed, and with which Mr. Macaulay has painted this remarkable scene.

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"A scrivener, who lived at Wapping, and whose trade was to furnish the sea-faring men there with money at high interest, had some time before lost a sum on bottomry. The debtor applied to equity for relief against his own bond, and the case came before Jeffreys. The counsel for the borrower, having little else to say, said that the lender was a Trimmer. The Chancellor instantly fired. A Trimmer! where is he? Let me see him. I have heard of that kind of monster-what is it made like? The unfortunate creditor was forced to stand forth. The Chancellor glared fiercely on him, stormed at him, and sent him away halfdead with fright. While I live, the poor man said, as he tottered out of the court, 'I shall never forget that terrible countenance.' And now the day of retribution had arrived. The Trimmer was walking through Wapping, when he saw a well-known face looking out of the window of an ale-house. He could not be deceived. The eyebrows indeed had been shaved away. The dress was that of a common sailor from Newcastle, and was black with coaldust; but there was no mistaking the savage eye and mouth of Jeffreys. The alarm was given. In a moment the house was surrounded by hundreds of people shaking bludgeons and bellowing curses. The fugitive's life was saved by a company of the train-bands, and he was carried before the Lord Mayor, (Sir John Chapman.) * When the great man, at whose frown, a few days before, the whole kingdom had trembled, was dragged into the justice-room, begrimmed with ashes, half-dead with fright, and followed by a raging multitude, the agitations of the unfortunate Mayor rose to a height. He fell into fits, and was carried to his bed, whence he never rose. Meanwhile the throng without was constantly becoming more numerous and more savage. Jeffreys begged to be sent to prison. An order to that effect was procured from the Lords who were sitting at Whitehall; and he was conveyed in a

*

*

carriage to the Tower. Two regiments of militia were drawn out to escort him, and found this duty them to form, as if for the purpose of repelling a a difficult one. It was repeatedly necessary for charge of cavalry, and to present a forest of pikes to the mob. The thousands who were disappointed of their revenge pursued the coach, with howls of rage, to the gate of the Tower, brandishing cudgels, and holding up halters full in the prisoner's view. The wretched man meantime was in looked wildly out, sometimes at one window, convulsions of terror. He wrung his hands; he sometimes at the other, and was heard even above the tumult, crying, 'Keep them off, gentlemen! For God's sake keep them off! At length, having suffered far more than the bitterness of death, he was safely lodged in the fortress, where some of his most illustrious victims had passed their best days, and where his own life was destined to close in unspeakable ignominy and horror."--Vol. ii. pp. 561-563.

The return of James to London--his sub

sequent flight to Rochester, and escape to France--the summary dismissal of the French ambassador-the meeting of the Convention of the States of the Realmand the plans of various parties for the future government of England-form the remaining topics of the last chapter of Mr. Macaulay's work. After the most anxious discussion of these plans of government, the House of Commons resolved," that King James the Second, having endeavored to subvert the constitution of the kingdom, by breaking the original contract between King and people, and, by the advice of the Jesuits and other wicked persons, having violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, had abdicated the government, and that the throne had thereby become vacant." The House of Lords experienced great difficulty in acceding to this resolution. They refused, by a small majority, to consider the throne vacant; but a letter from James to the Convention, as usual, assisted his enemies and disconcerted his friends. When the question was again submitted to them, the House of Peers resolved, almost unanimously, that James had abdicated the government, and, by a majority of 62 to 47, it was decided that the It was then proposed,

Throne was vacant. "that the and carried without a division, Prince and Princess of Orunge should be declared King and Queen of England."

On the 13th of February, 1689, both Houses met in the magnificent Banqueting House of Whitehall. The Prince and Princess of Orange took their places under the canopy of State. The resolution of Parliament was read; and after it, the Declaration

of Right, embodying the principles of the constitution. In the name of all the estates of the realm, Halifax requested William and Mary to accept the Crown. William tendered his own gratitude and that of his Queen, and assured the assembled legislators that the laws of England would be the rule of his conduct. Such was the termination of the English Revolution, and such its triumphLiberty achieved-Law inviolate-Property secured-and Protestant faith established.

Such is a very imperfect analysis of Mr. Macaulay's immortal work. Enriched with the wisdom of a profound philosophy, and laden with legal and constitutional knowledge, these volumes will be read and prized by Englishmen while civil and religious liberty endures. In Mr. Macaulay's historical narratives the events pass before us in simple yet stately succession. In his delineations of character we recognize the skill of a master whose scrutiny reaches the heart even through its darkest coverings. His figures stand out before us in three-dimensions, in all their loveliness, or in all their deformity, living and breathing, and acting. The scenes of listening senates of jarring councils-and of legal and judicial strife--are depicted in vivid outline and in glowing colors; and with a magic wand he conjures up before us the gorgeous pageantries of state-the ephemeral gaiety of courts--and those frivolous amusements by which time's ebbing sands are hurried through the hour-glass of life. May we not hope that such a work will find its way into the continents of the Old and New World, and reach even the insular communities of the ocean, to teach the governors and the governed how liberty may be secured without bloodshed-popular rights maintained without popular violence--and a constitutional monarchy embalmed amid the affections of a contented and a happy people.

We are unwilling to mingle criticism with praise like this; but, occupying the censorial chair, we must not shrink from at least the show of its duties. Mr. Macaulay's volumes exhibit not a few marks that they have been composed with a running pen; and we have no doubt that, in subsequent editions, he will prune some of their redundancies, and supply some of their defects. There is occasionally a diffuseness both of description and discussion. The same ideas occur under a slight disguise, while dates are omitted, and events are wanting to unite different portions of the narrative, and to gratify the curiosity of the reader. The work is obviously defective in

| the proportion and symmetry of its parts. Historical sketches, sometimes of men beneath any peculiar notice, and literary, ecclesiastical, and political disquisitions often break the continuity and mar the interest of the story: and we occasionally recognize, in argumentative discussions, the copiousness of the writer in search of converts, when we might expect the rigor of the logician in quest of truth. In the early part of Mr. Macaulay's first volume, he frequently illustrates his narrative by analogous or parallel facts drawn from ancient and modern history. These illustrations, however agreeable to the classical scholar, or the learned historian, startle the general reader without instructing him. The feelings "of the Ionians of the age of Homer," for example-the comparison of "Rome and her Bishops" to the "Olympian chariotcourse of the Pythian oracle"-the relation "between a white planter and a Quadroon girl"—and the robberies "of Mathias and Kniperdoling"-are not happy illustrations of other relations and events.

The very brilliancy and purity of Mr. Macaulay's style tend, by the mere effect of contrast, to display the most trivial blemishes. We are startled, for example, at the passages in which we are charged in which we are charged "with pleasuring our friends" with the accomplishing a design"-with "committing a baseness with the tincture of soldiery"—with giving allowance" to do anything,-with "swearing like a porter"—and with "spelling like a washerwoman." These and similar phrases have doubtless escaped from Mr. Macaulay's pen when the intellectual locomotive was at its highest speed.

We cannot close these volumes without giving expression to the deep and painful feelings which the events they record have left upon our mind. While we rejoice at the triumph of Divine truth over human error, and of constitutional government over a licentious despotism, we blush at the thought that religion, and the forms and rites of religion, should have been the mainspring of those bloody revolutions which have desolated England.

The domestic history of Britain during the seventeenth century is but a succession of plots, and seditions, and rebellions, prompted by religious fanaticism, or springing from religious persecution. The struggle between the popular and the monarchical element was but the result of that fiercer conflict which the rights of conscience had to wage against an intolerant priesthood and a bigoted royalty. Opposed by the